There is going to be an afghan film festival in Edinburgh toward the end of February, the aim is to show a new face of Afghanistan. One which has not been familiar to UK audience, the idea is to bring creativity and fun from Afghanistan. But I don’t see anything creative when I look at the festival program. It’s the same old boring stuff. Taliban, Osama, Kandahar, misery and various stories of a haunted nation. Why should osama or Kandahar always represent Afghanistan. Even if we try to show another face. It’s because the festival organisers didn’t know how to look behind barmak and Rahimi to find new faces of Afghanistan. Let me explain why.
I didn’t dare to call film an industry in Afghanistan, because Afghan film is not an industry, the word industry implicates a distinguished process of production, distribution and screening. It doesn’t exist in Afghanistan, for the obvious reason of economy to support it. but a point to ponder up on is, do we need an established market which has the purchase power and interested in afghan film or a successful industry can create a market. I believe if good business skills are combined with artistic expression then film and video products could be sold. The problem is that we don’t have film makers who could think about the audience, and to be able to think about the ways to make afghans interested in their films. That is a starting point, once audience is interested then you can sell to them.
The film makers are interested in themselves. They are interested about what they think and then they market it internationally. Film in Afghanistan is a notion of arty farty recreation which introduces Afghanistan to clandestine audience, seemingly abroad. Osama won a golden globe award while its merely known to few people in Afghanistan. Whether osama was good enough to win the award than its competitors is a different issue which I will write about in the next post.
I don’t call film an art in Afghanistan because it’s not an art. Art is mass and art is creative. Film industry in Afghanistan is in the hands of few. There is a definite monopoly which I will come back to later.
A few people like seddiq barmak and attiq Rahimi and some others are renowned as film makers. They are happy to be famous and that is the end. There is no notion of bringing up and supporting a generation of film makers in the hope to invest in creativity. The renown filmmakers think they are the ultimate symbol of creativity. I see this as a bad practice but I wish it was only limited to their lack of vision and misunderstanding of the meaning of Art. They create an entry barrier for the young film makers, by default and merely because they exist. There are dozens of young and energetic film makers around Afghanistan which are struggling with their ideas. Some I know has even produced films. But the reason their films are not getting publicity is because of monopolists like attiq Rahimi and seddiq barmak. I believe that young film makers are equally creative as barmak or Rahimi, if not more. But they will never get the attention. Among them their might be people to change this creative talent into a marketable art which could support them invest in film making and create more films. the situation resembles a bit like the film makers in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Are they talented? Yes of course they are. But do they make any money. NO. Hollywood does, Hollywood producers make the money because they have a good distribution system. But they are not more creative than Edinburgh and Glasgow filmmakers. I give this example because of the festival in Edinburgh.
I think a great fun project would be to network the young film makers and try to market their products. Encourage creativity and enable them to get access to festivals such as Edinburgh.
I don’t think I have been real constructive. I think we should go behind the blame game and look into ways of turning film into a vibrant sector. I know many people who does that but work need to be done at different levels. Creative enough is not good, the film needs to reach out and go to different markets.
2 comments:
Hi Sanjar,
thanks for the comments, it's good to get feedback on the festival. I agree with you that there's not enough film from young afghan film-makers. This was something we were really keen to include, but found it really difficult to access any sort of film network in Afghanistan. We have included shorts like 'Kabul Cinema' but would love to develop this side of the project in the future. Also although you say films by Barmak and Rahimi are very well known here, they are not widely seen audiences, especially pieces like (A)fghanistan an Impossible State. We do want to try and show a wider portrait of Afghanistan and I feel like this is a start. Hopefully through this people will hear about the festival and young Afghan film-makers will have the opportunity to be more involved in the future. Also we have been thinking about the idea of linking up young Afghan and Scottish Film-makers, infact I was talking to someone about this just yesterday! I think this is a great idea and would really like to try and help it to happen. Hopefully we can talk about this a bit more at the festival. Hope all's well,
Dan Gorman (one of the Reel Afghanistan co-ordinators)
I watched osama during Asian movie festival in Dushanbe. Some other brand new short afghan fiction/documentaries made with the help of siddiq barmak was shown as well. All of them were about kids, kites and doves. women in chadri, of course. All of them were extremely didactic. one wouldn't miss the point director was trying to make. points as were following: women are people too, it's good and touching, when children study, it's beautiful, when they set doves free and fly kites; talibs burn movies, the war is bad. what can i say, hard to disagree.
I don't have patience to write down plots the way it was shown. as it was shown in real time with stunning literallity (the boy was running from a to b for 5 minutes, the women with kidney problem had a 20 centimeters cobble stone in it(i bet real kidney is much smaller then that foreign stone body and so on).
Note, i'm not talking about quality:shooting, editing, actors playing - it's a different story. what was annoying me - naively ridiqulous plots. or am i too demanding? don't think so. the only reason i was trying to be relatively kind and not to pick on every detail, which i normally would have picked on, is that was Afghan movies, adjective, which is very important to me.
There were 3 of us: sanjar, me and a Belorussian friend of us, who spent 1 year in Afghanistan. after screening: we were: "yeah, it's too plain and quite annoying but for afghans it's good". we meant the fact that poor afghans instead of using their Kalashnikovs managed to make a "movie" was great enough. sanjar asked us to listen, what we've just said. since then i'm done with double standards.
looking back i'm pretty sure (can't find the program on the Internet, but remember sidiq barmak appearing on the stage pretty after each of screened) the majority of screened movies were made by/ with approval/blessing of sidiq barmak, which means, things might be not too bad. the screening was not representative.
Yet Sidiq Baramak's and Atiq Rahimi's movies are representative. they represent afghans and afghan culture abroad. Nothing else is screened. Nothing/no one else gets to get some funding.
Note, for example, osama is not a pure afghan film. it's an international co-production between companies in Afghanistan, the Netherlands, Japan, Ireland and Iran. Can't believe, these guys couldn't have done a better job. It costed 46,000 $(at least wikipedia says that), which is nothing in comparison with holywood production, but quite something for afghan "movie industry". It took siddiq barmak amount of time starting from June, 2002 to March 2003 to finish his masterpiece with his international crew. Yeah, the title was a godsend, "although the title of the film highlights an allegorical relevance to Osama bin Laden, there is no further similarity". such a disappointment. i thought we were gonna watch a revealing documentary on number 1.
"Osama was very well-received by the Western cinematic world. It gathered a rating of 96% on review site Rotten Tomatoes, which tabulates the reviews of online professionals into a single rating" and this i almost can't understand. I have my explanation for this. Don't know, to what extent it's true.
I believe making movies is about telling a story. Normally directors have to think about it, imagine, combine, try... To my mind, in order to make a movie about Afghanistan for western audience, one doesn't have to think about a story. Afghanistan is full of them. Just try not to be too stupid and spoil them. These stories might be not so striking for Afghans themselves, as it a part of their everyday life, but Westerners would certainly freak out, when see a mob of 100 afghan women in blue chadri. So, if you (or your international Japanese-dutch-Iranian crew) can afford a camera just go outside and film everything/everyone passing by. Don't forget to speculate on women/children rights, remind your audience that your movie is first to be produced after taliban and you were in exile in Pakistan as another half of the nation. it'll help to sell the movie and will make you a hero and the only one/two representatives of oppressed afghan nation.
So, what i think is happening with rotten tomatoes guys, is that they don't see the difference between the reality and a movie about this reality. Of course, they pitty poor afghan women and don't like talibs, but giving this movie an oscar is kinda more political then fair. I think, liberal westerners saying anything critical of afghan people in the face of afghan movie director (about whom they know nothing, except his nationality and a tragical story of his baned movies) it is as bad as Holocaust denial.
Once i've been to the international human rights documentary festival in warsaw, where people were supposed to vote for the best documentary. So sometimes i didn't know how to vote, because the story was brilliant, but the movie was crap. I was so sympathising with the heroes so i was ready to vote for their spoiled stories, but i never did. By the end of the day, who cares about heroes? Everyone praises genius director, fighting against human rights abuse. So if you so care about afghanistan, and afghan movie makers, who are kind of part of it, why there is no other movies but yours? It's called monopoly.
Coming back to edinburgh festival and and others of that ilk. I would say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Tlaking about afghan part of it, I am afraid it's as representative as it's dushanbe's predecessor. Audience will probably pitty poor afghanistan as it was probably well-conceived. Organisers will probably feel satisfied too as they are going to do a good deed - they will show that not all afghans are freaks with Kalashnikovs at the ready. Is it going to be a picture of afghanistan more or less reflecting it's contemporary reality? I doubt it. To me it reflects couple of directors ego personality, who guessed well how to sell their work, parasitizing on real life about which not many people know. I'm affraid if there were not women in chadri and poppy, there wouldn't have been movies made by these people.
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